PLUS
India SMBs Server Market Growing at 12 percent /20 www.smechannels.com
india’s first IT magazine for sme business VOLUME 04 | ISSUE 08 | PAGES 54 | OCTOBER 2013 | RS. 20/-
SECURITY CORNER /26
GUEST TALK
SME TREND
/52
Panasonic: Trends in Digital Signage market in India
HID: Securing Identity
/48
BPE: Engaging the Partners
MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL
IMPORTANCE OF CHANNEL BEST PRACTICES SANJAY MOHAPATRA editor@smechannels.com
ORGANISATIONS CAN’T do without channel partners. No matter a business is big or small to establish foothold in the market partners come to play a pivotal role. Partners can take their product and services to the remotest of the places and to the customers hitherto inaccessible to vendors. It is their reach both in terms of physical and personal relationship which endears the vendors to reach out to them. But a partner-vendor relationship is a fragile one and to make the bonds stronger and last longer it has to be nurtured and cared for. There need to be genuineness in the relationship, based on trust and loyalty and yes, profitability too. This is what our cover story is based on: the channel best practices that vendors follow to keep their partners in good humour. It does make sense; it’s the partners who are ultimately the ‘face’ of the product or the company. They way they handle the products, take it to the market, the rightful customers can make to break the image of the company. This is where channel enablement, training, educating on the products, enabling them with the right sales and marketing tools come in handy. But the fact of the matter is like any business the main driver for the channel partners or for that matter any business is profitability. In these hard times with the shrinking margins everyone is looking for ways to differentiate themselves in the market. The partner programs that are launched in the market to help partners make sales should be formulated keeping the mind what’s best for both of them; and not just one sided. One do keep hearing from the partners how these program are nothing but vendors dumping their stuff on them in the garb of helping them make sales. Trust is a two way road. Some partners also rue to the fact that vendors do not trust them and this further discourages the partners. Committing to this relationship is not just the vendors or the partners’ job; both sides need to give their best to make the relationship a success. Vendors need to be committed to the responsibilities and not stray from what they promised to their partners; and partners in return need to fulfil their part of the agreement only then will this marriage work.
ZyXEL UAG4100 Unified Access Gateway ZYXEL Communications’ UAG4100 Unified Access Gateway is a new hospitality gateway which delivers best-in-class services and achieves high customer satisfaction for businesses in the hospitality industry. The UAG4100 supports dual radio frequencies, 2.4GHz and 5GHz, to serve two times of users than legacy Wi-Fi gateways. The design of dual radio automatically switches to 5GHz when 2.4GHz band is fully occupied, and digests traffic flow to avoid unstable data transmission due to the shortage of bandwidth.
SPECIFICATIONS The UAG4100 also adopts a management platform that can handle up to 300 wired or wireless users simultaneously. FINAL WORDING This can become a significant burden for the owners if they do not have the right equipment.
OVERALL RATING
6
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SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2013
23/10/13 9:19 AM